BROKEN - A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF STEVE & MICHELLE
PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIK CASTRO
REPORTING: MEG MCCONAHEY & ERIK CASTRO
This is the story of Steve and Michelle's final year living on the streets. The couple allowed a photographer and reporter unfettered access to their lives in order for the public to better understand the complexities of being homeless in America. BROKEN first published in The Press Democrat on September 6, 2018.

Michelle Last placing her hands on the belly of Highway 101 after sleeping under the freeway with her husband Steve Singleton.

"I'm in hell"
---- says Michelle, describing life under hwy 101
SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA | 2017
Behind a metal door in a crawlspace under Highway 101, Steve Singleton and Michelle Last huddle in hiding. A spear of light from a thin, open seam between a wall and the underbelly of the interstate reveals their tent perched atop a steep earthen slope. It smells of mold and damp dirt. But the couple would rather be in this grave a few inches beneath the eerie thrum of freeway traffic than risk Steve’s going back to jail.

From this highway cave Michelle peers through a narrow opening which offers a view of the downtown mall and all the consumer products that are out of her reach.

It’s a short reprieve. Two days later, police find the hideout and arrest Steve for failing to appear in court on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. He was popped when the pair took cover in an empty office, fearful after a homeless man was stabbed to death on the streets not far from where they were sleeping. 

“I went though a phase where I was embarrassed to be living on the streets, but now I realize we’re OK with our situation. We’re comfortable with where we are and maybe that’s why we haven’t made a big effort to get off the streets.” - Steve Singleton

Alone, Michelle packs up the blankets, loads the tubs of clothing, food, and gear onto their bike trailer, and moves to a leaky underpass in downtown Santa Rosa. Being homeless means being constantly on the move. And Steve and Michelle have it down to a science. They can tear down and be on the road in a half hour. 

Bicycles are the couple's mode of transportation to work, to doctors appointments and they are used as trailers for packing up their campsite when police clear the underpass of all homeless persons. “Getting around used to take us forever when we had to walk” - Steve

Michelle and Steve aren’t legally married but refer to each other as husband and wife. They met at a Santa Rosa homeless shelter about nine years ago after Michelle, 47, fled what she said was a bad relationship with a drug dealer. As she tells it, the last straw was the day she stepped out of her room and found two police rifles pointed at her face. 
Before becoming homeless, Steve lived in Forestville with a wife and two young sons and worked for a towing company. But at some point about 18 years ago, he began spiraling into a life of drugs, petty crime, and ever sketchier living situations that bottomed out on the streets. 
He’s been in and out of jail many times, mostly on misdemeanor and failure-to-appear warrants. Steve also has a short fuse and a history of domestic violence. In addition to misdemeanor drug possession charges and a felony conviction for stealing a truck, his criminal record includes three convictions for misdemeanor domestic violence and one conviction for misdemeanor spousal battery in Sonoma and El Dorado counties. 

At around 7 a.m. Michelle helps Steve prepare to leave for his full-time job at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. February 18, 2017.

But at the age of 52, he finds himself taking on a new role as “shot caller” and conduct-enforcer within the loose community of homeless that in Sonoma County has reached emergency proportions. He and Michelle condemn other street people who aren’t productive, and live in filth. They also are protective of those who are trying and the most vulnerable — the elderly and the young — some of whom call them “Mom” and “Dad” and look to them for help and leadership. 
Steve is boisterous and a tease. When he gets to talking, it is non-stop, whether recounting a story or ranting about how the city disregards the homeless. 
He’s made a certain peace with the streets. 
“I went through a phase where I was embarrassed to be living on the streets, “ he concedes, “but now I realize we’re OK with our situation. We’re comfortable with where we’re at and maybe that’s why we haven’t made a big effort to get off the streets.” 

Steve and Michelle having a morning discussion from the tent under highway 101. The sidewalk becomes their living room under the constant hum of traffic.

Michelle, a quiet counterpoint to her gregarious partner, gets increasingly exasperated however, and desperate for a roof and four walls. Michelle also has a past and has spent time in jail. In 2010 she was convicted of credit card forgery and felony possession of a controlled substance.
Both want society to give them another chance. Steve says many people on the streets at one time “took a left turn,” but are trying to make their way back. “Whenever you traveled down that highway — a year, two years, three years ago — you got to travel all the way back down that road to get on the right turn again … it’s a long goddam road to travel back. The thing is, you can’t give up.” 

Steve and Michelle prepare to leave to a hidden location where they will shower tonight before heading back to their tent for the night.

Their relationship is alternately tumultuous and tender. Despite frequent fights and breakups, a fierce loyalty and devotion has held them together amid a relentless struggle for survival.
On the streets they uphold a code of conduct that includes no pan- handling, no booze, and a militant refusal to relinquish their civility amid the trash, noise, drinking, fights, poverty, drug abuse, danger, and grinding disrespect that comes with living on the ragged edges of Wine Country’s bounty.

Michelle serving Chinese take out to her dying friend Vinny.

VISITING A SICK FRIEND
Steve and Michelle have a soft spot for others suffering in the shadows of a society that snubs them. One is Vinny Hayes, an old acquaintance, who is dying at Memorial Hospital. When Vinny asks for Chinese food, they bicycle from their campsite across the street to fetch him takeout. Michelle, in scrubs, quietly lingers as Vinny moans in pain, even as it stirs painful memories of her mother’s death from cancer when Michelle was just 7 years old. 

Watching Vinny suffer in the hospital brings up the memory of Michelle’s own mother who died of cancer when Michelle was 7 years old. “I remember lying on the lobby floor at the hospital. They wouldn’t let me into her room to see her because I was too young,” she said.

In Vinny's hospital room the couple listens as he whispers quietly to himself, "Oh God, help me God, help me." It become unbearable for Steve seeing Vinny in so much pain. Soon after, Steve leaves Michelle alone in the room as she tries to finish her lunch.

They have fond memories of their former lives when they worked as carneys, living in the bunkhouse while on the road and gaining a following operating “The High Striker” strongman game. But Steve, for all his charm, can also be a hothead. When he got into a clash at the carnival, he was forced to leave; Michelle reluctantly followed.
The couple doesn't scrounge for food. They appreciate meals at St. Vincent's Dining Room in Railroad Square and often whip up their own, of sausage and eggs, pork chops and steak - prepared on a propane burner that has gotten them into trouble with police. The couple sleep on a stack of soft blankets - they refuse hand-me- downs - and bicycle to the portable showers run by The Redwood Gospel Mission and Catholic Charities - a chore that can take hours. They hit the laundromat weekly; Steve decries the homeless who filch free clothing, wear it once, and dump it on the street.

Steve kisses Michelle before he turns himself in to the Sonoma County North County Detention Facility in Santa Rosa. He was given a 7-day sentence for both a trespassing ticket and for having marijuana pipe when both Michelle and Steve was sleeping at a business on 2nd Street taking cover from the rain.

Steve and Michelle have mixed feelings about their peers on the street, variously protective and furious.
“I can't let that guy sleep there, he's making us all look bad,” Steve says one day as he spots a man sprawled beside a row of garbage bins in front of a small house beyond the underpass. Crouching down he yells at the man to get up, grabbing him by the collar as he struggles to lift him. Steve's voice is shaking and his eyes fill with tears. “Look man, I live on the streets too. I'm just like you. Can't you see I'm trying to help you?”
He offers to carry him to the underpass for safety but the man asks to be left alone. Defeated, Steve heads back to his tent, stopping to look back down the street where the man is still lying with the garbage. A soft rain begins to fall. “That guy doesn't understand it,” he laments, his voice choking up. “If he's drunk and he sleeps in the rain, he'll die out there.”
Look man, I live on the streets too. I'm just like you. Can't you see I'm trying to help you?"
---- Steve struggles with the behavior of other homeless persons.

There is a brief struggle as Steve tries to get the man to leave.

Then, an emotional plea, "Look man, I live on the streets too. I'm just like you. Can't you see I'm trying to help you?"

THE BIG INJURY
At the start of 2017 Steve has a full-time job, pedaling five mornings a week on his nearly new bike to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, where he works on a maintenance crew, while Michelle sweeps away the dirt and trash outside their tarp-covered tent and checks rental listings that might by some remote chance meet the criteria for a housing assistance program. The futility of her tasks leaves her alternately angry, defiant, and depressed, her flashing moods reflected in her deep-set eyes. 
Both find it increasingly hard to live on the streets as the effects of age set in. Michelle has colitis, back problems, and a torn shoulder from lifting the hammer of The High Striker. In April Steve severely tears a rotator cuff during the winter rainstorms while lugging wooden pallets he planned to use to get their tent off the muddy ground. He has already had multiple surgeries, including a heart stent, and suffers chronic diverticulitis. Years ago he had all his teeth removed and chose not to get dentures. 

Steve walked from his tent hidden on the banks of the Santa Rosa Creek across the street from Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, still wearing his sleep clothes and sneakers. Siobhan Nebesky, left, performed the MRI and the results showed that Steve had quite of bit of damage to his right shoulder. 

"I'm hurting bad and I can't work right now, I can't do nothing," Steve says during an examination of his injured right shoulder by Physician Assistant Luis Garcia. Steve tore a rotator cuff trying to build a platform for his tent in the mud. April 30, 2017.

A morning of severe shoulder pain, Michelle comforts Steve and later helps dress him for the day. April 14, 2017.

Yet he says he’s healthier than he has been in years after weaning himself off a load of prescription medications that he said were only making him sicker. Both smoke pot, but claim they are otherwise clean after years of drug use. 
“We have hard times. It’s stressful,” said Steve, who was born and raised in Sonoma County and then Lodi after his parents divorced. “I love my wife dearly. We are clean. We don’t do the things half the other people do. And people respect us.” 

Throughout the year Steve was arrested a few times and both Steve and Michelle spent several stressful appearances throughout this project at Sonoma County's Superior Court of California dealing with a variety of charges. On this day Michelle is seen talking to her public defender, Julia McIlroy, right, who was working on Michelle's case after she was arrested during her job as a security guard. The police officer didn't believe Michelle was an employee for Praetorian Event Services and arrested her after searching her backpack and finding drug paraphernalia. December 8, 2017. 

People on the street, that is. One day Michelle is pelted by loose change flung from a car window. Steve is awakened in the middle of the night by a drunk in a Mercedes calling people sleeping in the underpass “worthless.” Disheartened that no one else would stand up to preserve their dignity, Steve confronts “the gentleman,” knocks him down and delivers a lecture on respect. “No matter what these people have done, they may be drug addicts or alcoholics, but they’re human beings,” he said, a mantra he repeats often. 
“It really got to me,” he reflects on a March morning as chill wind rips through the concrete tunnel between Santa Rosa’s east and west sides. “It made me sad they’d gotten to the point where they couldn’t speak up for themselves. Society has shut the door on them so many damn times.” 
It was a galvanizing moment for Steve. That and the five days in jail on the trespassing warrant during which he stared at a message posted on his cell wall: “Use this time wisely, to think and to figure out the right thing to do.” 

Michelle hands over a metal bat to Steve in front of their tent. The two are standing their ground because a man that made a threatening remark to Michelle about 3 weeks ago has returned to their place on 5th Street. After Steve approached the man with the bat and exchanged some words, he left without incident but Michelle was clearly shaken.

ON THE MOVE
Steve and Michelle Flee from the Chaos of Downtown Life

Steve collecting branches to create a thick intricate canopy to hide their tent during the first few days of living at their new location behind the Chanate Historic Cemetery,

SPRING – SUMMER 2017
Wherever they land, they nest. Over the course of the year, Michelle and Steve move more than a dozen times, schlepping from one underpass to another and from one hidden campsite to the next. In April they settle into a sylvan glade behind the old cemetery off Chanate. But rains turn their lush Garden of Eden into a muddy mess.

Michelle outside their tent surrounded by their intricate canopy of twigs, sticks and shrubbery held together with plastic zip ties.

In May they scout a spot across from Memorial Hospital beside Santa Rosa Creek. Eventually they’re discovered by police, who give them 72 hours to move. They move to what they hope is a more hidden spot nearby. That also is discovered. This time, Steve is given 10 minutes to drag everything up on a tarp, even with his torn shoulder.

With a power drill, zip ties and screws Steve builds the frame for a cabin out of tree branches.

One of three cabins Steve built along Santa Rosa Creek during the summer of 2017.

Sick of the constant displacement and threat of arrest they decide it will be safer outside the city limits. By summer they carve out an elaborate homestead in the blackberries beside a pond in the creek. With a level and power tools, Steve constructs what amounts to a cabin, complete with door. Twice they’re told to tear it down. Each time Steve, undeterred, rebuilds farther downstream. Only after the third time at the end of summer do they admit defeat and head back into downtown six miles away. 
A desperate Michelle confesses to feeling like she’s on the verge of a breakdown. “I’m tired; I can’t do this anymore,” she said from her camp back under the overpass. “It’s killing me. I’m too old for this. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going to end.” 
"I'm starting to forget what her face looks like"
---- Michelle, reflecting on the fading memory of her mother who died of cancer when Michelle was a child.
In late summer, they get an offer to share a two-bedroom house with a friend on property west of town for $600 a month. The hitch? The owner can’t take dogs and Michelle, several months earlier, had adopted a pit bull puppy for comfort, companionship and protection. She refuses to go without her Missy. But that’s not the only problem. One day while visiting and watching TV in the friend’s cottage, Steve suddenly panics. Sweating, all he can think is that he needs to get out. 
He is perplexed by conflicting demons — a discomfort about being inside and the fear of getting a home only to lose it.

"Sometimes I feel better out here than I do in a house," Steve says while the couple lives on the banks of the Santa Rosa Creek. March 10, 2017.

Steve and Michelle were evicted from their campsite on the Santa Rosa Creek outside city limits by a small crew of men working for the county water agency; an agency that employs Steve's son. The couple decided to spend their nights back on the underpasses, but this time the sidewalks on 6th Street are densely crowded. They both hate in here but as Steve said, "It's the only place we can stay where we know we won't be arrested."

“It makes me sad thinking this. Sometimes I feel better out here than I do in a house. But then again, my poor wife is out here sleeping on this dirt,” he laments. “I feel bad. I really don’t know how to make a change to make it better for her because who can afford $1,200 a month rent?”

Michelle with her 2-month-old puppy Missy. "If you can't care for yourself, you shouldn't take on a dog," Steve says, but adds that the dog helps Michelle cope with the stress of living on the streets. June 20, 2017.

SCAVENGING FOR A LIVING
Steve’s shoulder injury early in the year has made him unable to work, so the pair ekes out a living by recycling. They approach the job professionally, targeting neighborhoods, houses, and businesses that are particularly fertile. It’s a night shift that can leave them exhausted the next morning. With flashlights and gloves they root through the blue bins only, trying to be considerate and not awaken sleeping residents, some of whom leave out bags of recyclables for them, knowing they’ll be by. Their efforts can yield up to $70 on a good night.

Michelle and Steve collect bottles and cans on this evening from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. They later sleep a few hours across the street from a popular restaurant under a row of redwood trees. In the morning they bike to a recycle center that pays them $60 dollars for their efforts.

I'm not here to read through people's trash, I'm here for one thing and I try to be respectful and not leave a mess," Steve says while collecting plastic bottles in the Cherry Street neighborhood of Santa Rosa.

"I LOVE MY JOB" - Michelle's Joyful Work Life

Michelle spends much of the holiday season working The Great Dickens Christmas Fair in Daily City. She doesn't have a vehicle so her friend and co-worker Martina Boudrot provides transportation.

SUMMER – WINTER 2017
When the Sonoma County Fair rolls around Michelle lands an ushering assignment at the horse races. In shades and staff shirt, she’s in her element. She loves the work, which leads to an $11-an-hour job with Praetorian, a private security company. By late summer she’s tooling all over the county and the Bay Area, to everything from the Sausalito Art Festival to Fleet Week to the Dickens Fair in Daly City.
She takes pride in her work and develops a growing confidence, aided by a new friendship with a co-worker who drives her to gigs and provides a refuge during fights with Steve. She likes this other life, where no one knows she goes home to a tent. 

Michelle's job at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds offers her something missing from her exiled homeless life; an opportunity to mingle with the general public, joke around with co-workers and socialize with fairgoers. August 6, 2017.

Michelle working the Dickens Fair with her co-worker and close friend Martina Boudrot who drives Michelle to most of her jobs. Boudrot's apartment is always open to Michelle for a respite from her life on the streets. November 26, 2017.

FAMILY - A Compassionate Son and the Holiday Season

Michelle spends a few moments holding Steve's grandchild Brett.

Steve and Michelle have a Christmas holiday meal with Steve's son Chad holding his Brett.

Steve and Michelle both have adult children and make an effort to stay in touch. Steve’s oldest, Chad, 29, couldn’t be more different than his dad. He has a good job overseeing programs for the Sonoma County Water Agency, is working on his master’s degree, and bought a home last year in Forestville with his wife, Alli. In September the couple presented Steve with his first grandchild, and he’s bursting with pride. Father and son talk once a week on the phone and periodically get together. A younger son, Brandon, 23, lives near Lake Tahoe.
Michelle has four grandsons by her daughter, Constance, and her son, Nickolas, both in their 20s and living in Washington. She says she and Nickolas were estranged for several years, and recently reconnected through Facebook. 

Steve with his son Chad, daughter-in-law Alli and holding his grandson Brett during a Christmas time visit.

"I used to play with Chad's feet like this for hours when he was a baby," said Steve, as he cradles his grandson's feet.

A PUBLIC BATTLE - Steve Fights for the Rights of Fellow Homeless Persons
"A lot of people get off that cement and go to work every day"
---- Steve Singleton, during an appearance before the Santa Rosa City Council.
2017 – SPRING 2018
As winter sets in, the couple is forced over to Last Chance Village, a homeless encampment behind the Dollar Tree in Roseland that mushroomed after the city shut down homeless settlements throughout Santa Rosa. Desperation among the displaced grows as they are now competing with fire victims who themselves were on the margins, before the October disaster consumed 5,300 dwellings. Steve and Michelle settle in. It’s not where they want to be but they figure they have no other place to go. 
Homeless advocates say Steve has always found a way to be a leader wherever he landed, and Last Chance Village is no exception. Steve becomes de-facto manager of the camp, working the phones, mediating arguments and fights, taking calls from people wanting information, and communicating with homeless advocates and attorneys. He travels by bike to city council meetings each week to stand before the council and argue the needs of his community.

At this homeless encampment "Board Meeting" both Steve and Michelle become a team. Steve is manager and go to guy while now Michelle has taken on the role as "Secretary." At this meeting topics ranged from, the future of the camp, the continue trash struggle, how to deal with donations from the local community and getting all the campers to sign the camp agreement. 

Steve thinks that six months in a shelter isn’t nearly enough time to get out of homelessness. And he’s come to believe that having a more permanent place to camp, without being run off constantly, is what people need to get back on their feet. He argues they need a stable place to set up camp, to free them from the need to “spend every minute trying to figure out how to survive.” 
“I want to see something positive out here. I want a place where people can settle down and focus on themselves. Focus on what they got to do,” he says. 

As homeless camp manager Steve is a liaison between health officials and the homeless campers. On this Monday morning he escorts Rafael Reyes, left, from Sonoma County Department of Health Services and Anna Branzuela, right, with the California Department of Public Health, who are passing out flyers announcing free STD screenings. January 29, 2018.

Steve, far left, who often has run-ins with police now leads police, fire and Sonoma county development officials through a homeless camp behind the Dollar Tree store in the Roseland neighborhood of Santa Rosa, California.

On Valentine’s Day advocates hold a press conference hoping to draw attention to the plight of camp residents, as the city makes plans to close it down with no alternative location. Both Steve and Michelle are key speakers. 
Michelle is quavering as she reads a speech she wrote out in longhand. “Being homeless is a very hard life,” she says, hoping to soften one person’s heart to the homeless. “You have to carry your belongings everywhere you go, trying to find a place to hide it. If you’re not careful your stuff can get stolen or thrown away … you can get a ticket for illegal camping or obstructing a sidewalk. How hard is it to think that something bad happened in a person’s life to where they lost their home and now are homeless? We are human just like you.”

Steve and Michelle moments after they both spoke at a press conference held at the homeless camp they have been living at since November. The couple have joined homeless activists and lawyers fighting to keep the camp from being shutdown. February 14, 2018.

Like an actress playing two distinct roles, Michelle moves between the world of the homeless camp and the world of the general public with ease. Here she is working a guard shift at the Art Museum of Sonoma County. March 25, 2018.

FINALLY, A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS
Steve and Michelle have long hoped to get a room in The Palms Inn on Santa Rosa Avenue, which is run by Catholic Charities. They see it as a bridge from life on the run. With only days before the city is set to shut down the Dollar Tree camp, throwing them back onto the streets, they learn their names have come up. They have a few hours on April 2 to break camp and board a shuttle to claim their room and bath. 

At about 9:30 a.m. on Monday, April 2, Steve get a confirmation from personal at the navigation center at this homeless camp to start packing and get ready to move ASAP. Michelle and Steve immediately pack up their belongings and a little before 2 p.m. they enter room 232 at the Palms Inn on Santa Rosa Avenue their first indoor housing in several years.

Steve confesses to feeling “weird,” he’s grown so adapted to life outside.
“I’m kind of scared I won’t be able to stay inside,” he admits.
“I haven’t slept in a bed for awhile. I don’t know what I feel. I’m happy for my wife. She’s inside … It’s good to be home. I want in two years to try to be somewhere else but right now this is better than where we’ve been. We’ve got a place to shut the door and call home.” 
Michelle regards the air conditioning, the bathroom, the queen- sized bed with a real mattress after several months sleeping on milk crates. “I feel like I’m on vacation,” she says in wonderment, “but it’s mine.” 
Neither Steve nor Michelle, however, is jubilant. Their joy is tempered by concern about those who are still out there. They feel like their work isn’t done. Michelle is concerned that others will think she and Steve are abandoning them. 
“I don’t feel right,” Michelle says, fighting tears. “It’s not fair to all the other ones. I don’t know where they’re going to go.”

Michelle and Steve embrace a few minutes after they enter their new home; room # 232 at the Palms Inn on Santa Rosa Avenue. They are both filled with a mix emotions: a bit of excitement, some anxiety about being indoors after so many years outside and guilt for getting a place while so many they know and care about still live on the streets.

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